Fine. She’d ignore him too. She turned the canvas so it was angled more toward the gray light coming through the window, then studied the bowl of fruit. She rearranged it once, then twice, then picked up the charcoal and tried to decide where to begin sketching. But her gaze wouldn’t stay on the fruit. It kept drifting to Carlisle, and the next thing she knew, she’d drawn a quick sketch of his head bowed over the desk. She looked over her shoulder, wondering what the duchess might think, but Katie didn’t want to draw over the nascent portrait. She rather liked the start she’d made. She added the quill and frowned at the nose she hadn’t drawn quite right. He had a nose that wasn’t too sharp or too round. Then there were the lips. She’d drawn them in a half-smile, but they looked a bit too thin. She knew from experience that his lips were soft and full and quite capable of teasing her until she was panting with need.
After last night, she knew exactly what it was she was panting with need for. She chanced a quick look at Carlisle again, buthe was still writing. Unbelievable! The man really did intend to ignore her all afternoon.
She certainly couldn’t be the one to engage him. Not after last night. She sketched for another hour, the task less enjoyable than it might have been if she’d been able to lose herself in the work. But her thoughts continued to drift back to the events of the night before. She’d gone to bed in a dreamy state of bliss, her body feeling the warm glow of pleasure. As she’d drifted off to sleep, she remembered thinking that perhaps this was what love felt like, at least the beginnings of love.
And now—well, now, she felt like she was a complete fool. She’d thought the kisses and caresses and theintimatething Carlisle had done to her with his mouth last night meant something. Surely that wasn’t the sort of thing he did to every woman. But she’d obviously been wrong to believe what they’d shared meant anything to him.
By the time she was ready to paint, she was flinging tubes of color here and there and slamming her brushes down. She mixed a shade of blue to paint Carlisle’s coat, and had just dabbed her brush in it and lifted it to the canvas, when she realized Carlisle wasn’t at the desk any longer. His seat was empty.
She glanced at the window, then at the furnishings before her. Had he left the drawing room without her noticing?
“That isn’t my nose at all,” he said from behind her. Katie spun around, splattering paint as she did so. Carlisle looked down at his coat. “That’s a good color match.”
“You weren’t supposed to see this,” she said.
“Obviously not. Either my mirror is faulty, or your eyesight needs checking.”
The door to the drawing room opened, and the duchess stepped inside. “I do hate to interrupt, but the hour grows… Oh.Oh!” She looked at Carlisle and then at Katie, then back at the painting. “Henry, what did you do?”
“Me?” Carlisle put a hand to his chest as though offended. “Ididn’t paint it.”
“I know that. You couldn’t paint a barn. I meant, what did you do to Lady Katherine? She has murdered your nose. And if I am not mistaken, she has done so with malicious intent.”
“Then it’s not my looking glass at fault.”
Katie notched her chin higher. “Noses can be tricky. I’ll fix it another day.” She set the palette down, rinsed her brush, then removed her smock. Rain ran down the windowpanes and the sky was overcast, making it hard to determine what time of day it might be. Surely Katie had stayed too long and Mrs. Murray would wake soon.
“Thank you again for the paints and the canvas.” Katie curtseyed to the duchess. “You are too kind, Your Grace.”
Ellsworth opened the doors to the drawing room, and Katie swept toward the foyer, where Burns waited with her coat and an umbrella. As she donned her coat, she heard the duchess scolding her son and Carlisle protesting.
“I’ll send a footman to hold the umbrella and see you back to the hall, my lady,” Burns said.
“That won’t be necessary.” The duchess stepped out of the drawing room with her son right behind her. “Henry will see her home, won’t you?”
Carlisle looked chastised but not unwilling. “If you’ll have me, Lady Katherine.”
“I’d rather go on my own, thank you.” Katie snatched the umbrella and started for the door, causing the elderly Ellsworth to fumble to open it in time. Her exit was not as graceful as she would have liked, but she was out of the house, and that was what mattered. She opened the umbrella and started along the path that led to Carlisle Hall, but she’d taken no more thana half-dozen steps when the umbrella was lifted from her hand and Carlisle held it for her.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Seeing you home. Don’t argue about it. My mother insisted. She says I’ve done something to make you very angry, as only a furious woman would massacre a man’s nose that way.”
“I’m not furious, and I don’t need you to see me home.” She began walking again, setting a brisk pace that Carlisle seemed to have no trouble matching.
“The fact that you’re yelling at me rather belies the truth of the first part of your statement.”
Katie paused under a large tree, whose wide branches offered some shelter from the rain. It would also hide them from view of Carlisle Hall, if Mrs. Murray was peering out the window. “Fine. I am angry. I drew your nose like that on purpose. You are fortunate I didn’t give you a wart.”
His eyes widened with what she thought was probably mock indignation. “Clearly, you exercised laudable restraint. Might I ask why you are angry with me? Is it because I didn’t argue for making the trek to the Robins’s farm? My mother assured me Mr. Robins would not be able to do any work on the lean-to today. I daresay she knows more about these things than either of us.”
“It has nothing to do with the Robins’s farm, as you very well know!”
He blinked at her. “Oh, no. This isn’t one of those times when I’m meant to know what I did wrong, but I have no idea whatsoever.”
Katie glared at him as water ran down her cheeks. She’d forgotten her hat, and that was his fault as well. But she could well believe Carlisle had no idea what he’d done to anger her. She did have those four brothers, and they were generally asclueless as he seemed to be. “You sat at your desk for almost two hours writing and said almost nothing to me.”
Carlisle spread his hands. “I didn’t want to interrupt your work. And I was writing more letters to Rory and King. I was hoping they might know something about this counter-spell. It occurred to me last night, after I went to bed, that the witch had a sister. Perhaps she cast the counter-spell and was the woman who gave the paper to the lad in Dunwich.”
